interview techniques

By Lisa • December 21st, 2009

This video was prompted by Mudd (aka Oza Meilleur) who has just bought Pamela in order to record interviews over Skype. I have since been looking at some screenshots of the latest version of Pamela and I can see that things are slightly different to the version in the video, and although you may not [...]

In my Twitter Poll about interview fears several people clicked “other”. For some reason the reasons given are not registered but Peter was kind enough to add a comment to explain his reason for clicking this option. He wrote: ‘I said; “The interviewer being hostile” Doesn’t even have to be aggressive (or satirical like Terry [...]

The last post about interviewing technique (re: drying up) reminded me that there is another important point to be made if you are conducting an interview. What are the dullest interviews to listen to? What really turns you off from an interview? The worst interviews, in my opinion, are those where the interviewee just keeps [...]

2. I’m Worried About Drying Up Again, let’s look at this from the interviewer’s point of view. If you have done your research and prepared your questions/flow of the interview (as described in tip #2 and tip #3) you shouldn’t have any problems with running out of things to ask. If you do, you have [...]

I ran a mini poll on Twitter (http://twitter.polldaddy.com/) asking about people’s biggest worries when conducting interviews. Some replies were taken from the interviewee’s perspective, which I will talk about at a later date, but some concerns applied to you as the interviewer or both. Let’s address them one by one: 1. My voice sounds awful We [...]

Tip #6 – Don’t let your pre-prepared questions dictate the interview I pretty much covered this in Tip #5. Try to let the interview move along naturally. If the interviewee covers a topic you were going to ask about later, let them follow that line of thought and ask any related questions. If new and better [...]

It annoys the hell out of me when interviewers ask questions that have already been answered, or they miss the opportunity to explore another more interesting avenue of questioning, simply because they haven’t been paying enough attention. It’s easy to be worrying so much about everything running smoothly and what you are going to say [...]

Take the time before an interview to put your interviewee at ease. It will make a huge difference to the outcome of the interview. There are a number of ways to do this: Brief them on the general outline of the interview. If they ask for questions beforehand, supply them with your questions or your [...]

Your interview format should not be set in stone, in fact there is a good reason for it not to be (see tip #5 coming up shortly). However, it is a good idea to outline the interview in note form for you to refer to. This could take the form of a flowchart. Or it [...]

So, I have already covered Tip #1: Know Your Equipment. But what else will help you get the best out of an interview? Tip #2: Know Your Topic and Interviewee No, you don’t have to take them down to the pub and grill them for a life history before the interview (although, maybe not a [...]